


Did We Lose?

by Maker_of_Rune_Vests



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Brothers, Gen, POV First Person, POV Loki (Marvel), Pre-Thor (2011), Present Tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-21 22:57:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11954454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maker_of_Rune_Vests/pseuds/Maker_of_Rune_Vests
Summary: This is inspired by the battle in Nornheim that Loki and Thor talk about in the "my brother and my friend" deleted scene from Thor (2011).I am not sure on what website I first read that there are trolls in Nornheim in the Marvel comics. This article, about a particular troll, contains information about them and their history: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulik





	Did We Lose?

**Author's Note:**

> This is inspired by the battle in Nornheim that Loki and Thor talk about in the "my brother and my friend" deleted scene from Thor (2011).
> 
> I am not sure on what website I first read that there are trolls in Nornheim in the Marvel comics. This article, about a particular troll, contains information about them and their history: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulik

I should be asleep, after having fought trolls and Norns from morning to the beginning of sunset, and then cloaked our entire army in smoke so we could retreat. But the vertical slash of a knife on my forehead smarts, and the bandage circumscribing my head troubles me more. And my brother will not cease walking back and forth in his room, far too heavily and slowly.  
He doesn’t turn around when I open his door, just keeps walking away, huge shoulders hunched and the bandage on his arm scratched away from where it ought to be. I sigh, catching up with him and putting my hand on his arm. “Sit down.”  
He sits on the bench set below the window, and I sit beside him and pull his bandage up to where it should be, smoothing it and tightening it. He isn’t bleeding much, so I decide not to make him go have it redressed at the moment.  
He has the surly, sullen, excessively manly look that comes upon him when he fears he is on the verge of tears. “Your hands are cold,” he all but grunts.  
“Shocked?” I say, raising an eyebrow, tucking the end of the bandage neatly into a fold of it.  
He stares at the floor, and I wait, watching him, my perennially cold hands worrying each other.  
“I don’t like losing,” he says, when I am beginning to wonder if we shall sit with the dark window behind us for the rest of the night. “I don’t like losing a challenge. Fleeing before the enemy.”  
“We didn’t actually lose,” I say, quietly. “Yes, we had to retreat, and yes, we lost more warriors than they did. But we were a fragment of Asgard’s force, versus almost the entirety of Nornheim’s. They cannot risk fighting us again.”  
“You think not, brother?” Thor asks, looking at me.  
“I’m certain of it.”  
Thor nods, and then his brows come more unhappily together. “We still lost too many.” He rubs his hand across his eyes. “I don’t like being the death of those who follow me.”  
And that is why he tried to fight a hundred Norns at once today—he was afraid of losing even more Asgardians, so he risked himself. He’ll never be able to see warriors as pawns on a chessboard.  
I put my hand on his shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault they’d enthralled rock trolls, brother.”  
He nods again, and lets out his breath audibly. “Your head?”  
“Its beauty forever marred,” I say, jesting. We both know that the only maidens who fancy me are the ones who think royalty outweighs odd looks, odder interests, and a mystifying mind.  
“Maidens like scars,” Thor says, smiling a bit. He finds my romantic difficulties more amusing than I do—when he isn’t seriously pointing out young women in whom he thinks I should be interested. His difficulties do not amuse me much, as they are simply that almost any maiden in Asgard would be delighted to wed him, and he can’t decide which to select.  
“Really? Well, I’ll be forever grateful to that Norn.” I stand up. “Or rather, to his ghost. Now go to bed and go to sleep, brother.”  
“You sound like Mother,” Thor says, standing up and chuckling.  
I grin. “And don’t scratch your arm. You’re a thousand and thirty-one years old; you should know better.”


End file.
